Today’s prompt challenge is to talk about our attitudes to scrapbooking.

Nowadays I’m a keen but painfully slow scrapbooker with a long To Do list of page ideas. It wasn’t always this way though. I bought my first scrapbooking magazine not long after I first started crafting, and I didn’t find a single thing in the mag that I liked. Everything was quite American, heavily decorated and very sentimental, not a stiff upper lip to be found! It wasn’t until I saw some cleaner layouts, smaller than 12×12, that I could really imagine myself scrapping.

I love mini books

Smaller formats are still my favourite – I adore maze books and mini books, although that’s normally because they’re made in a clever way, and I’m a sucker for anything trick! As I mentioned in My Crafting Style, I like the photo or journalling to take pride of place in my layouts. To me, scrapbooking is a really personal hobby. It’s about presenting my pictures and memories in a nice way, and helping them tell a story, rather than creating something pretty for its own sake. That’s not to say I don’t think that’s worth doing, it’s just not what I want to do. I love the idea of showing my scrapbooks to Bob when he’s older so he can see what we were like before we had him, and what his childhood was like. It’s almost like being immortal 🙂

Sometimes it’s all about the paper!

The other great appeal to me of scrapbooking is getting to keep my creations! I have a big box full of cards ready to send and it’s at least half full of cards I don’t really want to part with. One great thing about scrapping is that you don’t have to feel bad about that. I often say that I need at least two sheets of all paper designs – one to craft with and one to keep. Papers used in layouts tick both boxes though, so it’s also a great way to hoard 🙂

There’s just one thing I don’t like about scrapping – printing out my photos – although that says more about my printer than scrapbooking. I’m trying to get a batch of pics together to get printed, so they’re available whenever I feel like doing a layout. If you can recommend a printing service, please leave me a comment!

My first ever scrapbook page, done for my application to docrafts – I love to include tickets and other mementos

Today’s blog prompt is “favourite quotes” – tricksy, as there are so many to choose from, and so many reasons to love them. Top of the list of sources for funny quotes has to be the TV series “Blackadder”, season 2 in particular (the Elizabethan one). The whole series was really just one long favourite quote, and has stood the test of time for me – it makes me just as happy now as when I first saw it in the 1980’s as a teenager. It also featured the most romantic exchange I’ve ever heard. Edmund Blackadder has just returned from captivity when Queen Elizabeth asks: “And me Edmund, did you miss me?” He replies: “Ma’am, life without you was like a broken pencil. Pointless”

I couldn’t talk about my favourite quotes without mentioning the late, great Douglas Adams. His books are full of great lines, but my favourite quote of his is one from an interview that applies quite well to me, and always makes me smile as it takes a character flaw and makes it seem quite endearing: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

If I want to feel inspired though, then I need to look no further than Winston Churchill. Witty and intelligent, he was a favourite quote machine, but his addresses to the nation during World War II never fail to spur me into action. I love the elegance of his Battle of Britain quote: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”, but the most inspiring for me is“Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say This was their Finest Hour.”I used it on a page in a circle journal a few years ago. The spec was to create a page around words that inspire you and it was circular, which just said “roundels” to me 🙂 I liked this layout so much I made another one for me, but by then had thought to make roundel brads too.